Pingtang Miao, named after

Pingtang County Pingtang County () is a county in the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou province, China, bordering Guangxi to the south. It is a high mountain valley and is inhabited mainly by members of the Buyei and Miao ethnic minorities ...

(平塘 ''píngtáng'') in which it is spoken, is a group of Miao language varieties of China.

Classification

The four varieties of Pingtang were listed as unclassified branches of

Chuanqiandian Miao Hmong / Mong (; RPA: ''Hmoob,'' ; Nyiakeng Puachue: ; Pahawh: , ) is a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hainan, northern Vietnam, Thailand, ...

(Western Hmongic) in Wang (1983). Li (2000) classified them together as one of eight branches of Western Hmongic, a position maintained in Wu and Yang (2010).

Varieties

There are four varieties of Pingtang according to Li (2000): *North (Strecker's Pingtang Miao), 11,000 speakers *East (Strecker's Dushan Miao), 4,000 *South (Strecker's Luodian–Pingyan Miao), 6,000 *West (Strecker's Wangmo–Luodian Miao ''Mhang''), 3,000 These are at approximately the distance of the varieties of the other branches of West Hmongic, which ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

'' assigned separate ISO codes.

References

{{Languages of China West Hmongic languages Languages of China